An old soul finding her place in life through honesty, humor and photography.

Main menu

Post navigation

How Do Dumb People Survive?

As a homeowner, I watch HGTV pretty often. My husband and I are handy people and have successfully completed a lot of DIY projects and renovations ourselves, by planning, budgeting, compromising and seeing the value of hard work. There is also a crazy concept of opening your mind and imagining possibilities. Not to toot our own horn, but we bought our first house together, which was a fixer-upper and have made it into a comfortable and modern home. We also aren’t in debt up to our eyeballs because of it. We aren’t wealthy, but we get by, so it’s not out of bitterness that I ask this; why are wealthy people so stupid?

I see shows like House Hunters and people will say, “We have a budget of only $900,000.” Only? Are you serious? Then I think, well, they must be pretty smart to have gotten that far ahead. And then the show continues, followed by ridiculously stupid and naïve comments.

“I don’t want that first house because the kitchen was yellow and that’s ugly.”

“Did you see the dated furniture in the second bedroom, ugh, horrible. We can’t live here.”

“Oh my God, this carpet is so worn. And there’s an ugly rose border on the walls. This isn’t going to work. I wanted something modern.”

Are you kidding me? Guess what, the rose border was modern in 1985, so get a scraper, remove it and make the décor how you want it. Can you pick up a paint brush? Have you considered new carpet or seeing if hardwood is underneath? If you have nearly a million dollar budget, carpet and paint are not exactly your main problem; your mindset is! This isn’t just a once and a while thing we see either, it happens on every variety of home and garden show there is.

Where do these people come from? How do they make a living? Because obviously we’re doing something wrong. I thought being a hardworking and smart individual was good enough, but clearly basing home purchases on the right paint color or the previous owner’s furniture is how to make it big.

Are we the crazy ones? How can the concept of fending for yourself and opening your eyes to potential be so incomprehensible? I get it, getting your hands dirty isn’t for everyone. We can spend the money to get it done or you can do it yourself. Oh wait, there is a third option; you can be ridiculous and turn down wonderful prospects because it doesn’t perfectly meet your current needs.

5 thoughts on “How Do Dumb People Survive?”

I’ll go you one better: how about those who won’t even consider buying a previously-owned home, and insist on building new. I begin to understand how so many could have overextended themselves into foreclosure. Hope a few of them learned something.

Hi Chris,
I’m all for being smart with money, it seems that chosing a home based on bedroom paint color is just ludacris though. No many people seem willing to work hard to make the most out of good opportunities. It seems its mostly the younger people though, they want everything to be perfect. Obviously that doesn’t apply to everyone though.